"Maybe This Is Because of Society?": Disrupting and Engaging Discourses of Race in the Context of a Service-learning Project. (May 2015)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Veloria, Carmen N.
• Is Part Of: Humanity & society. Volume 39:Number 2(2015:May)
• Page Start: 135
• Page End: 155
• Publication Date: 2015-05
• Subjects: service learning -- critical race theory -- discourses -- qualitative inquiry -- civic engagement; Sociology -- Periodicals; 301.05
• DOI: 10.1177/0160597615574741
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0160-5976

Abstract

The popularity of service-learning courses has dramatically increased in colleges and universities across the country. As these projects often require engagement with diverse communities of color, scholars of color in particular are faced with tension that requires a pedagogical balancing act of focusing on academic content while simultaneously attending to sensemaking of experiences. As sensemaking can be in part dialogic, this scholarship focuses on the critical readings of student journal entries and sensemaking of class dialogue at the end of the semester. I interrogate students' discursive practices and textual representations by drawing on socio cultural theory and critical race theory in an attempt to learn how to critically structure future service-learning courses. Interpretations highlight that students' discursive practices often omit views of how economic, political, and social structures impact individuals and communities. Unexamined discourses, varying ways of knowing, and positionality stances warrant disruption and engagement for the sake of civic participation in a democratic, justice-oriented, and culturally responsive manner.